Child taken by from womb by forced C/S for social services!

[StarlightMcKenzie]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10486452/Woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social-services.html

Could there ever be a justifiable reason for this?

Spero, I will refer you to the individual stories contained within this thread, mine included and the fact they do not always try to provide exactly that.

As I stated earlier in the thread, in my experience and the experience of many others I know, you are often faced with inexperienced, under trained and over worked social workers, dealing with complex mental health cases, which they know absolutely nothing about. This leads to mistakes being made and bad decisions.

Claw2, I am aware of other sections, but as I said she had been sectioned at least twice, more sections don't prove me wrong.

When you talk about the baby being 'removed' do you mean the actual CS (again, almost certainly done in the interests of the mother's health), or what has happened since?

I do find the adoption thing odd. In all the MH cases I have seen, no-one has ever had their children taken away.

I think it is quite possible that something has gone wrong (but I don't know what). At the same time, it is possible that there is a reason why the mother is not considered able to look after a child.

OK, Spero, I have googled it.

John Hemming's girlfriend had criticised SS over adoption policies and he felt that there might be a hidden agenda by SS.

Sometimes things happen to people and then they discover injustices etc that they never knew about, but which had been happening to other people.

How many MPs campaign for greater openness and transparency in our family courts? Not many. But for some things, they will all put a badge on their lapels and campaign.

I actually believe that conspiracies exist. Now if a solicitor was losing every single case against SS and was claiming success at fighting them in court, then I would start to wonder about that solicitor and whom the solicitor was working for. But if someone is helping people and representing them in court in order to fight the state in court, then I can't see anything wrong with that, because that is what our legal system is all about.

Of course they don't 'always'. That is the discussion we are having. No one is in infallible.

But do they fail deliberately out of malice or do they fail because they are massively over worked and/or poorly managed or toxic combination of the two?

Anyone who wants to believe JH and IJ etc are knights on white chargers is I suspect impervious to any arguments I might make. I think I have given more than enough info to raise reasonable doubts about him.

And of course, he complained about me to the Bar Council because of a thread on here. He is not quite the champion of free speech you would imagine.

Badtime, she could have been sectioned under 4, without first going through 2 or 3 or ever having been sectioned at all. That's besides the point.

I am talking about the c/s and what has happened since. It is not uncommon for bi polar suffers to experience more 'episodes' during pregnancy and shortly after and for them to stop taking meds during episodes. If the woman was well known to mental health services, she should have been receiving more care while pregnant and have a plan in place.

I feel this woman has been badly let down.

I have just been tweeted by someone who is asking JH to respond to what is now up on the Essex council site. There is quite an interesting timeline about her illness.

And it confirms she was found unable to care for her older children by the Italian authorities.

Section 4 can last for up to 72 hours. She was under section for at least five weeks, so she could not have been held for this time under section 4. That was actually where my 'at least' came from: she could have been placed under an emergency section (or a s5 holding section(also up to 72 hours), if she had been admitted to hospital voluntarily), then s2 then s3.

I agree with you that something has gone badly wrong in this case, but I have no idea what.

Ah yes John Hemmings. . I knew the name rang a bell. Yep, he's the monster that's campaigning for the faimily courts to be stripped of their secrecy and made to be more accountable!
How very dare he have the audacity to question what goes on in these closed courts!

I have to admit to not reading all the posts here as I think it would be bad for my blood pressure. I have reported one of Starlight McKenzie's posts where she claimed that LAs do not abide by the law.

Well done Scottish mummy Andywarhole Spero and others who have the patience to try to separate fact from fiction. As others have said, none of us know the details of this case and that's exactly the way it should be. These matters are highly confidential and the agencies involved are bound by confidentiality, and so the truth of these stories in the newspapers can never be told and again that's exactly how it should be.

The sad thing is that the sensational reporting and poster's willingness to see this as a horrendous case and a violation of the rights of the mother and her child etc etc. will simply mean that many parents with mental health difficulties will be afraid to see their GP in case this leads to involvement of Social Services. I can assure anyone that contrary to popular belief, social workers do not go looking for children to remove and in JH's words "out up for adoption." Indeed sadly the opposite is true as some LA SSDs are stating that they are unable to remove children who maybe unsafe in the care of the parents, as they cannot afford to care for them, and this is because of this coalition (of which JH is a part) making savage spending cuts in the budgets of all public services.

Oh lord I can see some of the names of MNs with whom I have clashed with in the past in relation to these kinds of cases. JH states that he will "find out the facts of this case" but he won't because being an MP does not give him a right to be involved in these confidential matters, no matter how he likes to see himself as the "saviour of those being ill treated by social workers." I agree with all that Spero has commented about him. I had thought he was turning his attention to constituency matters, rather than posting on MN but sadly I was wrong.

Finally I don't honestly think it's worth trying to change the mindset of posters who are ready to believe newspaper reports and jump to a conclusion without one shred of evidence. Indeed I think it is somewhat arrogant to think that they know better than the professionals who are involved in these cases. And before someone points it out, YES I know professionals make mistakes, but arguing about a case when the only "facts" are those reported in the press is just plain silly as far as I can see.

Spero, in my case I feel a combination, inexperienced and over worked and a certain degree of malice. The first part I can understand, the second I cannot. When faced with overwhelming evidence that we got it wrong, we will lose all files from our systems and totally ignore our complaint procedures, so as not to be accountable for our mistakes.

I do realise that there is a system and process in place to deal with this kind of thing, however most parents just don't have the expertise, time, emotional resistance or money to take it further. Especially after being dragged threw the mill by inexperienced, over worked social services for months on end.

Massively over worked and/or poorly managed and a degree of malice, these are the people we trust to protect our children.

But sadly that is not all he is doing. Otherwise I would not have a problem with him at all.

I like people who campaign for the vulnerable and dispossessed.

I don't however care much for those who use them for their own ends.

Then campaign for better training, better wages, better support.

If we are so ashamed of our child protection system, we all share responsibility for it.

Maryz, I too was wondering if she was given certain advice by an Italian equivalent of IJ or JH and left the country knowing she was pregnant in order to evade the authorities.

Badtime she could have been sectioned under 4. Section 4 is used in an emergency and 'it is of urgent necessity that you are admitted and detained under 2 and that compliance with usual section 2 requirements would involve an 'undesirable delay''. In brief section 4 just means you need to be detained under section 2, but only one dr is needed to section, instead of the usual 2 drs.

Spero, I plan too, once I have finished my campaign to have my son's needs met and to try to undo the damage already caused by social services. Ill informed, inexperience people in positions of power, cause an awful lot of damage.

Wow, spero, mary z, who's speculating now Sounds almost like you'd like that to be the case!

It's possible Maryz, although she was only supposed to be there two weeks and it was five weeks until her baby was delivered and she wouldn't be able to fly at later dates. I find it interesting that she had (or thought she had) her children's passports with her in the UK. As someone who works for an airline you'd think she'd know better than that. Which makes me think there was more than a panic attack going on.

"Finally I don't honestly think it's worth trying to change the mindset of posters who are ready to believe newspaper reports and jump to a conclusion without one shred of evidence. Indeed I think it is somewhat arrogant to think that they know better than the professionals who are involved in these cases. And before someone points it out, YES I know professionals make mistakes, but arguing about a case when the only "facts" are those reported in the press is just plain silly as far as I can see."

I prefer to believe journalists and our free press and whistleblowers who tell the public what was going on.

Of course none of us knows the facts in this case, that is why we are asking questions and discussing it and it is worth discussing it because the oxygen of publicity is what forces more transparency. It is all over our newspapers and people want to discuss it.

Let's not pretend that things don't go wrong. We don't know if they have in this case. We are discussing it based on the little information that we have. With MPs such as John Hemming raising it in Parliament, maybe more information about it will come out.

"The brave whistleblower social services chiefs tried to gag today breaks her silence to reveal the shocking catalogue of blunders that led to Baby P’s death.

Nevres Kemal is the experienced social worker who was so horrified at Haringey Council’s shambolic child protection department she wrote to ministers to warn of an imminent catastrophe.

Nevres, 44, exposes how staff were taken on “team-building” jaunts to Barcelona and Dublin and blew £1,600 on tea parties at the Ritz. Back in their office, urgent files were piled high and ignored. Children like Baby P who needed the department’s protection were shamefully let down.

She reveals she warned children’s services chief Sharon Shoesmith she would have “blood on her hands” if urgent action wasn’t taken.

But instead of her concerns being taken up and acted upon, Nevres ended up bullied, ostracised and drummed out of her job. She then had to agree to an injunction by Haringey Council in a bid to keep her silent.

Six months after her fateful warning to ministers, 17-month-old Baby P was dead.

She said yesterday: “They tried to gag me but I don’t care. I knew something like Baby P would happen. It was just a matter of time. I need to speak out now for the children who still need care.”

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/baby-p-whistleblower-breaks-her-silence-358822

I have reported one of Starlight McKenzie's posts where she claimed that LAs do not abide by the law.

Really? Then you had better report my post too. And while you're at it, come over to the Special Needs board and report every single poster on there as 90% of us are trying to get help for our DC educational needs and are constantly up against unlawful policies put in place by LA.

Haven't read the 19 page thread - I'm just ploughing in. I read about this in the paper yesterday. They kept refering to her 'breakdown' and it sounded as though she was having massive, all consuming panic attacks. My fisrt thought was that she must have been basically losing her mind and becoming unstable to the point that she was unmanageeable and a danger to herself and to those around her. I can only imagine that this decision to perform a CS was made for her own safety as well as the baby's. I think we should not judge until we know all the facts.

LA's do not abide by the Law, its a fact, they get taken to Tribunals on a daily basis to ensure that they do!

"Why does everyone think there must be more to this"

Because there always is.

The mother is highly unlikely to go to the media and say "opps actually I tried to remove the baby myself with some nail clippers and a steak knife and announced at the time that as soon as the baby came out I was going to lock myself in the kitchen cook it and eat it all whilst bleeding to death but its ok now because I'm better so why did the bastards take my baby"

Equally as such no social worker is ever going to say "well I was about to go on holiday was a bit nervous about any other social worker having to much contact with mum because actually she's not to bad a parent and the covering sw would figure that out, so I decided to ramp up the concerns convince the dr's to give her a CS so I coud seize the baby before my holiday so I could give it to my mate whose desperate or a baby and I thought this one would look fetching in green and that's my mates fav colour"

(Obviously those are just examples not based on anything real)

Bottom line is some parents do abuse children or have no ability to care for them to the extent that its to risky to let them try

But equally as such we do have travistys happen with over zealous professionals and they nearly always involve that person hood winking other professionals because they cannot act alone

I do remember a case in a near authority of children removed for well over a year due to ink from wellies (sounds unbelievable but it did happen)

But I know of many more cases where children have been removed the parents have complained and claimed no wrong doing but it was obvious the children needed to be.